A STUNNED jury were told yesterday that a Scot on trial accused of murdering a nine-year- old schoolgirl was a triple child-killer.

Van driver Robert Black was unmasked at the court in Northern Ireland as having murdered three young girls in the 1980s.

One victim, Susan Maxwell, 11, was snatched from near the Scotland-England Border in 1982, while Caroline Hogg, five – killed a year later – vanished from Portobello, near Edinburgh.

A third girl, 10-year-old Sarah Harper from Yorkshire, was murdered in 1986.

Black’s reign of terror ended in 1990 when he was caught with a six-year-old in the back of his van at Stow in the Borders. The girl had been bound, gagged and stuffed into a sleeping bag.

The harrowing details of the 64-year-old’s record were outlined at Armagh Crown Court, where he stands accused of kidnapping and murdering Jennifer Cardy in 1981.

Nine-year-old Jennifer was abducted as she cycled to a friend’s house in Ballinderry in August that year. Her body was found six days later floating in a dam 10 miles away.

Jennifer’s parents Andy and Patricia watched from the public gallery and Black sat impassively in the dock as a Crown lawyer told the jury about his shocking past.

Toby Hedworth QC said Black’s past crimes did not in themselves make him guilty of Jennifer’s murder but he claimed striking similarities between the cases would prove it.

He stressed to jurors: “What you certainly must not do is say, ‘Well he’s done those other ones, he’s a thoroughly bad man so we’ll find him guilty in this case as well’.

“What you have to do is look at what he has been proved to have done in respect of those other girls and see whether it assists you in deciding whether you can be sure that it was Robert Black rather than some other individual who abducted and killed Jennifer Cardy.

“The prosecution will submit that the similarities between Jennifer’s case and those other cases make it clear that they were the work of the same man.”

Mr Hedworth told the jury legal reasons had prevented Black’s record from being disclosed earlier.

He said the delivery man had been convicted at Newcastle Crown Court in 1994 of killing Susan, Caroline and Sarah, and attempting to snatch a 15-year-old girl in Nottingham in April 1988.

At an earlier hearing, he had admitted the 1990 abduction of the six-year-old.

Susan went missing as she walked between the villages of Cornhill-on-Tweed and Coldstream after playing tennis in July 1982. Her body was dumped by a roadside in Staffordshire. Police suspected a sexual assault.

The following July, Caroline vanished as she played near her home in Portobello. Her body was found in a ditch in Leicestershire 10 days later. Sexual assault was again suspected.

In March 1986, Sarah disappeared after leaving her home in Morley, near Leeds, to buy bread. A month later her body was found in the River Trent near Nottingham. She had been raped.

Black, originally from Grangemouth, was eventually arrested in Stow in 1990 with a girl gagged and bound in the back of his van.

The lawyer said the six-year-old was stuffed into a sleeping bag and that a medical expert predicted she would have died within an hour if she had not been freed.

The court also heard details of Black’s chilling conversation with a detective as he was led away.

Black said: “What a day it’s been. It should have been Friday the 13th. It was a rush of blood. I’ve always liked young girls since I was a young kid.”

The officer asked if he worked alone and Black replied: “It’s not the sort of thing you do with witnesses around, is it? I just saw her and got her into the van. I tied her up cos I wanted to keep her until I delivered the parcels to Galashiels.

“I only touched her a little. I wanted to keep her until I went somewhere like Blackpool so I could spend some time with her.”

Black later pleaded guilty to the girl’s abduction. Police went on to link him with the three murders, the attempted kidnap of the 15-year-old and a series of other charges.

Mr Hedworth said while Black denied the crimes he was found guilty of in the past – apart from the kidnapping in Stow – he did admit to police in 2005 that he fantasised about abducting pre-pubescent girls and having sex with them in his van.

The QC told the jury the scenarios Black admitted dreaming about had similarities with the circumstances of Jennifer’s disappearance.

He said: “The prosecution will submit to you that they contain a partial or perhaps even coded admission to Jennifer Cardy’s abduction and murder by a man who cannot bring himself to admit to the enormity of his behaviour.”

Mr Hedworth said the Crown contend there are at least 12 distinct similarities in the various cases.

The lawyer said these patterns, along with the nature of Black’s fantasies, made a compelling case and provided a “signature of offending”.

The prosecution also insist work records prove Black was in Northern Ireland on the day Jennifer was killed.

Black, whose delivery work in the 1980s took him all over the UK, denies the kidnap and murder of Jennifer.